While All the big media networks were following the hostage situation in Coffeyville, Texas, there were other places that didn’t get as much attention. My area is one of them. In Jerusalem there has been an ongoing confrontation between the police and some Arab residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The Arab families live in a building that owned by a Jewish family before the 1948-9 war. The heirs of that family sold the building to a Jewish organization, which, in turn, passed the title to the Israeli government as a site for building a new school. That is as much background as I have on the origins of the confrontation. The Arab families took the case to court, claiming they were living there “from time immemorial”. After due deliberation the court rejected their claim. The families were given eviction notices and plans made to tear down the old structure to make the space available for a school (please note that this neighborhood is in the East Jerusalem side and is populated almost exclusively by Arab residents). The past few days have seen Arabs, mostly, it appears, from the family that had been living there, gathering on the street and rooftops with homemade Molotov cocktails. They have thrown these improvised destructive weapons at the police and other Jewish vehicles. The police, so far, are holding back. The last time this played out (right after the court decision, if I remember correctly) the Hamas rulers in Gaza annexed the cause as their own, claimed it was an attempt to drive Arabs out of Jerusalem, and escalated their violent support to the point of firing rockets from Gaza at Jerusalem. We ended up with one of those mini-wars that are characteristic of Israeli-Hamas relations. At the moment, there are negotiations over trying to bring as end to this sort of behavior, but they are not direct talks between the parties involved. Hamas does not recognize Israel. They only talk via an Egyptian intermediary. Tension and potential violence in numbers well above the 200 or so law enforcement people that ultimately rescued the 4 hostages in Texas. Did you hear about any of this in the international news? I doubt it.
Then there is the “incident” that took place last night. An Arab car drove through the intersection at the Gush Etzion Junction. It’s a couple of miles south of where I live. The car stopped and a passenger got out. he pulled out a knife and went to try to stab one of the soldiers on guard duty at the junction. He was not successful. The soldier shot and killed him. Like the Texas case, it involved one individual attacker. The result was similar. In both cases there was an obvious anti-Semitic motivation. But there is an important difference beyond the fact that the latter incident doesn’t get the same international media coverage. In America there are constant attempts to find a rational motivation for such actions. I’ve lived with antisemitism form over 80 years. There are some activities that simply don’t have a rational explanation. Americans fighting the Japanese in World War Two experienced the Japanese Kamikaze attacks and could not understand how someone would want to kill himself just to inflict harm on an opponent. To understand Islamic Terrorism you need to disengage from the search for rational behavior. Most Moslems are not terrorists. But enough of them are to give the rest a bad name.In any case, you need to remain alert and be prepared for encounters with people whose behavior is not what you might consider reasonable and rational. In my book this includes Islamic Terrorists and many of the Black Lives Matter supporters.
Wetherhorn 